Archive for August, 2010

Assuming this is truly the end of the recession, we can all look forward to a spate of product innovations unlike any since World War II. These products will solve previously unknown problems in brilliant new ways and make their manufacturers millions. If you’re in the business of designing, making or delivering products, the anticipation can be thrilling . . . or daunting.

After all, how exactly do you innovate? Tons have been written on the subject, and yet innovation still comes off as requiring either genius or black magic. If your company lacks a systematic framework for doing innovation, it’s not prepared for this new global economy.

Here’s ours. It’s not really magic: it just works that way.

Click for PDF

Buyers are complex, goal-driven analyzers and organizers of the world around them who are uncompromising when assessing their own experience. Our machine lets you design or adjust that experience by turning a few metaphoric dials.

Here’s how it works. People buy products to achieve outcomes. But rarely can they achieve those outcomes with a product alone. Products often need other products or services to form more complete systems, which in turn may need some kind of infrastructure (e.g., electricity, a road, etc.) to make the product go. Even then the user may need other requisites to use the product — anything from additional people to specialized skills. And of course, not all users are the same. They may use the product in very different contexts — for different purposes, in different environments, in different time frames.

When people evaluate a product, they weigh the outcomes achieved against the requisites required. Whether you’re a product manager, CEO, engineer or whatever, your job as an innovator is to maximize the outcomes while minimizing the required requisites. You do this by modifying the product, the system or the context in which it’s used.

Let’s take an easy one, Coca-Cola. Coke didn’t come in bottles until someone imagined users consuming it in a context other than the soda shop. That idea led to eliminating the requisites of a soda fountain (infrastructure) and the skills to use it — dramatically changing the outcome-requisite equation. Questioning the system comprising grocery stores led to vending machines. Rethinking the purpose led to Diet Coke.

Innovation can be hard to come by if you try to ideate too much at once. Instead focus on very discrete aspects of the user experience as defined in our innovation machine. It works, like magic.